It's a fascinating tale about London and it's people - the complex relationships they have with their familial backgrounds and their present situations, as well as their relationships with each other.

Karim, the teenage primary character, is an Englishman born to an Indian immigrant father (Haroon Amir) and an English mother (Margaret). He doesn't easily fit into any categories so he really doesn't have a social group (he's too English for the Indian immigrants and too Indian for the white folks). At the same time, he represents so many categories (racially, sexually and intellectually) that he easily gets swept into various activities - almost none of which he feels an attachment to.

Throughout the entire novel, he's on a quest of self-discovery during an era of great tumult in London - the 1970s. We see hippies and punks and New Wavers. He lives - for a period - in West Kensington, one neighborhood away from my Earl's Court flat (a neighborhood he describes as being home to whores, transvestites, addicts and Australians).

Part of my discomfort about reading while in a different land stems from the idea that I'm reading about people doing stuff, rather than actually doing stuff myself.

Ultimately, books make me feel a greater connection to the place, I think. For the most part, sadly, I am a tourist here (today I visited Big Ben and Parliament). I could never live the characters' experiences, even over the six weeks I am here. But books provide context for what I do actually get to experience.

1 comment:

I have been in Paris for 2+ weeks. Or is it 3+? I have seen the Eiffel Tower, but have yet to set foot in a single museum. But my cafe count is off the charts.(Don't anyone fret. I am here for another two months and the museums are free on the first Sunday of the month. Sounds like another museum in another place I used to know...)